Company shares how their Gen Z worker's ‘out-of-office’ messages look like and it's downright hilarious

Gen Z people can bring a fresh, humorous twist to the modern workplace. They somehow manage to effortlessly blend casual banter with professionalism and also stick to their unique ways of communication, in contrast to millennials or boomers. This difference can especially be seen when Gen Z employees put up creative messages to let their coworkers know that they are "out of the office." Oilshore company (@oilshore on TikTok) posted a hilarious video where they shared some of their Gen Z coworker's peculiar and funny out-of-office messages. The video has gained 2.6 million views and 1196 comments on the social media site. 

It kicks off with a woman pointing to a text overlay that reads, "My Gen-Z coworkers' out-of-office messages." The first message is very honest and satirical, with an employee named Joseph writing, "On vacation. Hoping to win the lottery and never return." Another worker candidly states how being out of the office is bad news for their coworkers but good news for them. The one that follows sounds much more scary, with them expressing that they will report people who try to contact them to HR while they are away on leave. After this, we get to see an employee making use of the classic browser error code "404" to reveal that the employee could not be found. 

The video goes on to show Georgia's comedic message, which reads, "Please enjoy your break from me!" One other coworker openly writes, "If you need me... too bad!" The next one is a message that we can all relate to with the employee stating that they are unsure why people are trying to contact them when they put it up on their calendar many months back. The final message of the video is the most brutal one from Tremaine, which says, "Contact someone other than me." People who watched the video found all of the messages to be very funny and shared their thoughts about it in the comments section. 

@melissa_miller commented, "I wish I had this direct attitude, but my millennial self would never be able to do that." @brilliantltybetsy shared, "Me as a millennial holding my 90+ PTO hours that I have to use by the end of the year like it's a game of Texas hold 'em." Another individual, @yungwheez, said, "I wish we could do this in my office. We can't even make jokes in the sales flares anymore." @mvh11 expressed, "As a millennial, it appears I may be a rare breed who does something similar to this!" 

There seems to be a lot of focus on the noticeably different approach that Gen-Z employees possess. Ravin Jesuthasan, a global leader for transformation services working at the human resources company Mercer, thinks that the different behavior that Gen-Z have when it comes to work is a result of all the struggles they go through, such as financial insecurity put in place by the older generations as well as global events such as the pandemic. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he noted that Gen-Z embraces a "work to live" attitude, unlike previous generations. They understand the realities of today's financial landscape, having witnessed broken promises such as long-term job benefits now absent.

You can follow @oilshore on their TikTok page for more funny workplace-related content. 

This article originally appeared on 4.29.24.